Pavor Nocturnus
by PhoenixFalls
Summary: CopDoc comfort things. Content warning: description of experiencing night terrors. Also, as a side note, not everyone experiences night terrors the same way though there are commonalities. The description herein is largely based on my own struggle with chronic night terrors. Takes place in the Baby fic timeline but it's before Chuck was born so I didn't include it


Lauren was a light sleeper. She hadn't been when she was younger; in college she would only ever wake up if the shrill beep of her alarm woke her up but about a month into her slavery to the Light, she'd learnt to sleep light. She was often woken up at ridiculous hours for any number of reasons and eventually, she found herself waking up for anything out of the ordinary. The faucet in the bathroom dripping, the sound of her comforter hitting the floor when she kicked it off in her sleep, almost anything would shock her into the kind of wakefulness people usually needed three cups of coffee for.

Even after the unification of the Dark and Light and the changes that had been made to the whole system had been made, she'd still wake up easily. The labs weren't even allowed to call her for anything unless she was on emergency call rotation, but it was hard to break a habit that had been established over so many years. When she'd first moved into her new apartment, completely owned by her, the noises of a new place used to fray her nerves and keep her from sleeping altogether, except the nights when Tamsin was over and exhausted her to the point of passing out.

Tamsin. She hadn't seen their relationship coming. Everyone else had, even Tamsin had, or at least she claimed she had but the Valkyrie was accustomed to claiming any number of things to inflate her own ego. Most of them were true, to be honest. They'd only been officially dating for six months and already the Dark Fae spent most nights dozing next to her at night.

Once her workload had lessened and she'd settled into a lifestyle that didn't orbit around being available to throw herself into work at literally a moment's notice, she noticed when she startled awake in the middle of the night, it wasn't because noises startled her, it was because she was terrified. She hadn't spent an absurd amount of money that still made her cringe on schooling to not know the signs of emotional upset when they happened. It made sense, really. She'd had to focus on the working aspects of her slavery twenty-four hours a day that she hadn't processed the emotional aspects at all and everything got compartmentalized. Now that she'd adjusted to having an actual life outside her work instead of just snippets of one, her mind was processing those years without her permission.

So now, most of the time when she woke up in the middle of the night, it wasn't because a car had driven by with the stereo too loud or Tamsin was mumbling in her sleep, it was because panic had risen unbidden and gripped her heart so tightly that she gasped herself into wakefulness. So far, she'd managed to keep it to herself. She knew on some level that she needed to reach out, she needed to do something before anything bad happened, but she was reluctant. She didn't want to saddle anyone with her problems and it wasn't like she could just _go_ to a therapist and say "I want to talk about the emotional and physical abuse and exhaustion I felt from being enslaved by a hidden group of supernatural creatures that on their better days mostly thought of humans as food." That would go over well. She'd be hospitalized before she even got to the point of going there in the first place. So she never spoke to anyone about waking up and darting her gaze around in the dark, fully expecting to be on the straw strewn floor of a dungeon cell or something worse.

This night had started out pretty well, actually. She had regular work hours now (at least, regular for a medical lab) so she'd gotten off work and wasn't on emergency rotation that day so she could anticipate doing pretty much whatever she wanted until the day after next. She'd had dinner with Bo and Kenzi and since they'd finished renovating the clubhouse into a condition that didn't violate every building code the city had a few weeks ago, the experience was a lot more pleasant than normal. Bo had left to go on a date a while after dinner (well, Bo had called it a date. Kenzi insisted if you were just meeting someone to have sex, it wasn't a date no matter how gratifying it was) so Lauren had resumed the arduous undertaking she'd started several months ago in trying to teach the other human how to make food that didn't taste awful on the best of days.

She'd gone home in a good mood which got even better when Tamsin waltzed through the door after she'd gotten off work like she owned the place (though to be fair, Lauren had never seen Tamsin walk into anywhere in a manner that didn't suggest she owned the place). They'd fallen asleep well before they usually did when the Valkyrie stayed over, but the taller blonde had pulled a double shift and Lauren's workload that day had been heavy. Right before she slipped into unconsciousness, the doctor was almost positive nothing would happen that night, but she'd been wrong.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep when she bolted upright from a dead sleep and it didn't occur to her to calculate. She was hyperventilating loudly, sweat beading on her face and back, her heart feeling like it was going to explode in her chest. She whipped her head from side to side, not really seeing anything or understanding where she was, she just knew that she didn't feel safe, that something was dangerously wrong. She blinked her eyes rapidly against the dark as if that would make the room brighter and a sharp pain was added to the tightening in her chest when her panic increased at not registering anything in the dark that reminded her of being safe. She felt the tears welling up in her eyes but once they started a trail down her cheeks, she promptly forgot about them as the sensation was completely lost.

She heard a low noise next to her, a voice maybe, but it was indistinct and it sounded like it was underwater because her head was full of screaming sounds that reminded her vaguely of her own voice. It didn't even occur to her to think that she could have been screaming out loud and she was just hearing her own voice. Lauren's upper body jerk involuntarily and violently to one side when she felt the arm around her shoulders, a hand pressing into her and trying to turn her body the other way. Incapable of solid thought, she lashed out at what she perceived to be an attacker, though her whole body was so tremulous that the blows that did land were loud but weak.

Another hand went around her waist and she was pulled into her assailant. It wasn't until her face was pressed against the Valkyrie's shoulder that she even remembered Tamsin was there. Almost immediately after, she flung her arms around the Dark Fae and clung to her as if her life depended on it, which in that moment, she truly felt it did. The desperate keening echoing around her died down to a quiet whimper, which she had the presence of mind to note she was making audibly, so the previous noises could have been aloud as well. Since she could process outside stimuli better, she became aware of being rocked rhythmically back and forth in a way that suggested the motion could have been going on for hours and Tamsin's low voice steadily murmuring that she was okay, that she was safe, that the Valkyrie wasn't going to let anything happen to her.

Lauren's shoulders shook as she pressed her face into her girlfriend's neck and let herself cry, still gripping the other woman tight enough that it was probably painful but the Valkyrie seemed unaffected. Tamsin just ran a hand in light circles around the doctor's back and kept rocking the human slowly while continuing to hum out that the human was at home and safe with her. Lauren's eyes dried and she felt like she'd been sobbing for hours but even with her current inability to conceptualize time, she knew it couldn't have been that long and Tamsin's words degenerated into soothing nonsense noises as the blonde human's crying turned into sporadic sniffling. The Valkyrie's even voice, the perpetual movement and the steady arms around her encouraged Lauren's breathing to slow and eventually she was calmed down enough to where she didn't have such a vice-like grip on Tamsin and her breathing was very nearly normalized.

The two women sat in silence for several minutes until Lauren felt the taller blonde's arms squeeze her in an embrace and they ceased rocking, the Dark Fae pulling the doctor's body away from hers slightly so she could look at her, but not releasing the loose hold she still had on her. Lauren kept her head down; she knew that her girlfriend probably wouldn't be able to properly read her expression in the low light but she felt that Tamsin would somehow see the feeling of guilt wash over her as she regained her composure. The smaller blonde was in the midst of rationalizing what had just happened, wondering if she could pass off the event as a one time thing when she felt her chin being gently moved so she would look at the Valkyrie.

In the small amount of moonlight that was peeking through the gap in the heavy curtains over the window, Lauren could see that Tamsin's face didn't hold any derision or even questioning, just concern and it was so genuine that she almost felt like crying all over again.

"Tamsin," the doctor started before trailing off. She wanted to apologize for what had happened but her voice sounded broken and like it was full of liquid. "I'm sorry I woke you." She blurted, cringing as the words were leaving her mouth. That hadn't been what she'd meant to apologize for.

But the side of Tamsin's mouth quirked up and the Valkyrie pressed their lips together. "How're you feeling, doc?" she asked, her voice as soft as the kiss. Her hand moved from under the human's chin to tuck her hair behind one ear.

"I'm… thank you." Lauren replied slowly, searching for a proper to string together the sentences she wanted to come out instead of the ones her brain insisted on involuntarily uttering for her. "I'm sorry about… I mean just now, I…" she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "That must have been a horrible way to wake up." She cringed again; she hadn't meant to say that last part out loud either.

"To be honest, I'm surprised it hadn't happened sooner." The taller blonde admitted. She continued when Lauren pulled back a little more to express her need for an explanation more clearly. "You've been on the edge of night terrors for months. I…" Tamsin cocked her head to one side slightly, looking for the right words. "Sometimes, when you're asleep, you get this look on your face and you make this distressed noise…"

Lauren smiled slightly in spite of herself, knowing that the unsure tone from the Valkyrie was embarrassment over having to explain that she'd watched her sleep often enough to note habitual patterns.

"Every other time, I've just had to talk to you for a minute, remind you I'm here, I guess and you'd be fine." Tamsin continued. She leaned forward and kissed the human's forehead. "I'm not a doctor but I am a Valkyrie and I definitely know what night terrors look like… and feel like. I just never said anything because I figured you'd be the type to say something about it when you were ready."

"I wasn't going to say anything." Lauren confessed quietly, moving back into her girlfriend. "It's so contrary to what I know and I feel so foolish for saying this, but I didn't say anything because I didn't want to be a burden on anyone."

Tamsin moved so that she was holding the doctor's face between her hands, tilting her head up so Lauren couldn't look away. "You're the smartest person I know, although given the goons I hang out with that might not be saying much." She waited for the slight smile she'd been fishing for before continuing. "But you can have all the logical understanding of something you want and you'd still not be ready when it happens. You're not a burden. On anyone. You can talk to me, you know. You're not alone, doc." She kissed her several times to emphasize her point and repeated what she'd been murmuring earlier. "You're safe now, Lauren. I'm here for you and I'm not going to let anything happen to you, do you believe that?"

Lauren smiled partially from the sentiment and partially because Tamsin didn't say her name often unless she was caught off guard or stressing a point. She liked the way her name sounded in the Valkyrie's mouth. The doctor leaned forward so her head was resting on her girlfriend's shoulder and the Dark Fae's arms were wrapped around her. "Yes." She finally answered, wondering if her tone conveyed how much she believed that.

"Do you want to talk or…?"

Lauren suddenly felt physically fatigued at the prospect of having even the beginnings of that conversation or maybe she'd been drained the whole time and only just now realized it. She didn't feel like this was a conversation she wanted to have half naked in the middle of the night anyways. "Sleep." She replied, her voice thick with the exhaustion that had come over her. She allowed herself to be pulled down into a horizontal position, resting her head on the Valkyrie's chest while the older woman's arms were wrapped tightly around her.

"How're you feeling, doc?" Tamsin asked again, running a hand back and forth the human's upper arm.

Lauren hummed, already half asleep and shifted a little to kiss the side of the Valkyrie's neck. "I'll be okay now." she replied, fully believing that was true.


End file.
